FPI Most Wanted – Comics Coming This Month – July 2014

This is where your FPI Bloggers get together and tell you what it is that they’re looking forward to in the next couple of months. Essentially this could be the only shopping list you need.

This is not a fixed in stone list, in some cases the shipping dates will slip and move around.

FPI Most Wanted comes to you each month in two flavours – Next Month (tomorrow) and This Month (you’re looking at it!) So here we go….. it’s time to look at July ….

COLM

Spider-man 2099 by Peter David and William Sliney (Marvel)

Future Spidey in the present written by the original writer of the 90’s series and an Irishman!! -Yes please!! I love David’s run on X-factor and Will Sliney’s art is beautiful!

Rocket Raccoon #1 by Skottie Young (Marvel)

Writer and artist on this series, Young is going to give a galaxy spanning tale of high adventure about a talking Raccoon- that’s just ridiculous!! I’m totally in!

Low #1 by Rick Remender and Greg Tocchini (Image)

I love Remender’s writing and when he paired with Tocchini on Uncanny X-Force it was an incredible arc- if they’re teaming together again, I’m sold! Especially on a futuristic dystopia tale, which is Remender’s wheelhouse!

Supreme: Blue Rose #1 by Warren Ellis and Tula Lotay (Image)

Can Warren Ellis do no wrong right now? Everything he’s producing seems to be top quality work, between Moon Knight, Trees and his novels- this is his next new series, playing with concepts of the Supreme Image hero from the 90’s.

I love the Hack/Slash concept, it’s so much fun and the series delivers gore, action and comedy in equal measure. It’s great to see it back and dealing with the Son of Samhain, which is ripe with good storytelling opportunities

Grayson #1 by Tim Seeley and Mikel Janin (DC Comics)

Nightwing has always been one of my favourite characters, I even have the Nightwing symbol from Batman:TAS tattooed on my arm. Dick Grayson now going off on a solo series where he plays a super- spy – I’m Sold!! Add in Tim Seeley and the fantastic art of Mikel Janin – double sold!!!

Batman #33 by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo (DC Comics)

It’s the Epic Finale!!! I love the finales to stories and I’ve no doubt this will not disappoint! Snyder and Capullo have been telling a great story, and I can’t wait to see how it ends!

JOE

One of the most classic science fiction novels of the 20th century, Larry Niven’s Ringworld (which would spawn a series much later after the original) is an enormous space habitat with many times the living surface area of the Earth and a terrific setting for tales because, like Dredd’s Mega City One, so many different things could happen here. I’m intrigued to see what this graphic adaptation does.

I know very little more about Newt than what the description tells me, but I am intrigued and frankly new Indy UK comics publisher Soaring Penguin has a damned fine batting average so far with their releases so personally I’m likely to have a look at anything they think is worthy of publishing.

A series of tales executed in a fascinating mixed-media, what else can I say except this is the great Dave McKean, whose art I can and often do simply sit and admire, panel by panel and come back to again and again to sit and absorb. He’s Dave McKean, he’s a god of illustration and we love him.

I saw someone on Twitter recently talking about this upcoming book and summing it up nicely – new Carol Swain, how could you not want it? I suspect this will be one of those wonderful slow-burners that, as you flip through each page slowly but inexorably draws you in and immerses you.

What makes us conscious? How do we prove we are true, thinking, conscious beings? And how do we treat others that could be? Alex’s wealthy relative, trying to pull him out of a post break-up funk, buys him the last word in realistic android. Also the last thing he wants. Alex soon realises her programming makes Ada the perfect, attentive companion with no desires of her own, but this grates on him, he knows she could be more – could she actually be made truly aware, become a person? In a world wary of AIs this is a dangerous, if very moral thought…

Rock cartoonist Kunnas takes a different look at the Beatles and their very early days – yes, there is that iconic pop culture image of the Fab Four on th zebra crossing, but this crossing is in the seedy red-light district of the Reeperbahn, back in the beginning when some inexperienced boys went to play the clubs of Hamburg and learn their craft the hard way.

Richard’s already posted a review of this intriguing work, in which a son recalls his late father as he prepares to ceremoniously set light to a replica Viking Longship atop a hill, with his father’s ashes in them, a magnificent final hurrah rather than sad farewell, and a life and shared times remembered. One that deserves more folk picking it up.

RICHARD

A collection worthy of Moore and O’Neill’s epic Century saga taking in 1910, 1969 and 2009 as the League finds themselves coming up against some very familiar names. Initially unimpressed, this one really won me over. Having the chance to read in one book is always preferable.

Emily Carroll’s webcomics are exceptional things, beautifully drawn, a great narrative voice, flights of spectacular fantasy and often extremely, unsettlingly scary. She’s also one of those rare breed of webcomic makers who push the format a little beyond a straight forward grid on the computer screen, utilising scrolling and animation to increase the tension and the thrill of her stories. But up until now there’s been no way to get hold of them in print. Until now. Well, until July 2014 actually, as that’s when Simon and Schuster are publishing the collection Through The Woods, containing five of her scary, troubling, haunting works, including the chilling “His Face All Red”.

One of those where I read the first issue, then promptly managed to not read any more. Thus it’s time to catch up with what felt like it was going to turn into something of a really well constructed spy drama with a twist or three along the way.

Another one of those interesting enough to read the first, never managed to follow it through. However, with Edmondson writing and Phil Noto finally seeming to deliver sequential art equal to his fabulous illustrating, and Black Widow one of those great Marvel Comics I can read without feeling bogged down in years of needless history, I’m looking forward to this one.

Because he’s too modest, Joe never put this in his picks. He should have done, not least because he’s in it. But he’s merely on of many, all writing eloquently and beautifully about the War that was meant to end all wars.

Finally available once more, Paul Pope’s frenetic tale of a circus escape artist has been out of print since 1999. It’s a magnificent example of Pope on his finest form. That’s more than enough for me.

JAMES

Supreme; Blue Rose, by Warren Ellis and Tula Lotay (Image)

I am curently enjoying Ellis’ work on comics, am rather looking forward to seeing how this team reintroduce one of Image’s main characters, and wondering how strange they can make it. The artwork I have seen to date from Lotay has always been impressive and I am excited to see how this comes together with an Ellis script.

Low 1 by Rick Remender and Greg Tocchini (Image)

I have not enjoyed Remender’s run on Captain America, but am wiling to give this science fictional story a try. Set in a future where the earth’s surface is uninhabitable, humanity has long retreated to the depths of the sea while sending out probes in an act of desperation, the return of one such probe sees an adventure to the surface.

The Squidder 1 (of 4) by Ben Templesmith – (IDW)

Definitely one for Cthulhu fans. The last surviving member of the Squiddder legion finds himself in a post apocalyptic world, where humanity is ruled by tentacled alien overlords. Can he overcome the evil with the help of a priestess? Calamari chaos no doubt will ensue.

The Last Fall 1 (of 5) by Tom Waltz and Casey Maloney (IDW)

There is a lot of science fiction on the go at the moment, and fiction that blends fantasy and horror with science fiction, all of which is good. The Last Fall sounds like Mil-SF and although a little clichéd I will be giving it a look over; A veteran of interplanetary war, battle hardened returns only to see his family killed by a suicide bomber, he returns to the fight, intending to bring it to an end.

Each issue of Bodies will have four 6 page chapters, four dead bodies, four detectives in different eras, from the 1890’s to the 2050’s. I am hopeful that this Vertigo series re-energises some interest for me in DC comics, as I have found their offerings of late to have been mediocre to poor, but from what I’ve read so far, this sounds like it could have real potential.

So, I will give this one a go, just to see how it is. Right now, there are so many terrific zombie and war comics, and FUBAR is a good mash of both, that DC really need to do something smart here to stand any chance at all. Their war comics since the New 52 launch have been somewhere between derisory and dreadful, but I will give this a shot.

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About The Author

Richard Bruton- Started in comics retail aged 16 at Nostalgia & Comics, Birmingham. Now located in Yorkshire, he's written for the Forbidden Planet International Blog since 2007. Specialising in UK Comics and All-Ages comics, Richard's day job in a primary school allowed him to build the best children's graphic novel library in the country.